Damien Lovegrove

11

Shoot at 90º to the light source for a dramatic portrait. The light and shade glancing across your subject will reveal shape and features beautifully. When you include the window in your shot let the highlights go. Concentrate on the mood and vibrance of the picture. Make a holistic exposure judgement while viewing the whole image. Don’t try and recover the highlights in post production it will look unnatural.

Kit list:

Use a camera with a fast prime lens. A standard prime lens with an aperture of f/1.8 or better is perfect for interior portraits lit by window light. I use a Fujifilm X-T1 with 14mm, 23mm, 35mm and 56mm prime lenses. I also have a 50-140mm zoom with OIS that I’m about to start using. Zooms are good too especially if they have optical image stabilisation. You may still need to use a higher ISO though to compensate for the smaller maximum aperture that a zoom lens usually has especially if your subject is laughing or animated………

Fuji X-T1

Do you love my work and want to support me? If you’re planning on buying camera gear, you can check out above-noted links. Prices remain the same for you, but a small percentage of your purchase value is valued back to me. Thank you!

08

Out of curiosity I have done a mini test with six Fujifilm X series lenses to better understand the characteristics of their images and the differences between them. I wanted to see how the clarity, contrast and bokeh compares. This is not laboratory science, it is a real world A/B comparison where the results are subjective and open to interpretation. I’m not one to read MTF graphs and I believe all professional lenses made today should be reasonably sharp so my attention as always turns to how pleasing is the rendering of the scene? I want to asses both the in and out of focus bits. So I went off to the cold, dark, woods with my friend Charlotte and set up a tripod. I used a Fuji X-T1 camera. The images were downloaded and the file names changed to represent the exif info. They were normalised for exposure but other than that there were no other tweaks. The sharpening settings were 25, 1, 25 and there was no noise reduction. I used the Pro Neg S camera profile and synchronised the white balance across the files. Note: Clicking on the picture will bring up the corresponding full res jpeg……….

Fujifilm Fujinon XF50-140mm F2.8

Do you love my work and want to support me? If you’re planning on buying camera gear, you can check out above-noted links. Prices remain the same for you, but a small percentage of your purchase value is valued back to me. Thank you!

30

Why I find the Fuji X system is faster to use than an SLR: With an SLR I used to either use aperture priority AV, A or manual M mode depending upon what I was shooting. Either way required me to take a test picture, assess exposure then adjust the settings or exposure compensation as required. I could then start shooting. If I missed out the review and adjustment stage I’d come back from a wedding with some strings of shots that were too dark or light. With the Fuji X system I shoot in M manual mode and it shows me the exact exposure and white balance I’m going to get before I press the shutter. I can tweak it as required and voila I get perfect exposures every time. No more exposure variations or test shots when I get back to the studio. The time saved at the shooting stage more than makes up for any difference in focussing speed……..

Fujifilm Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2

Do you love my work and want to support me? If you’re planning on buying camera gear, you can check out above-noted links. Prices remain the same for you, but a small percentage of your purchase value is valued back to me. Thank you!

18

A recent phone call from a client for a rush photoshoot led to a great opportunity to use the lighting skills I learned many years ago at the BBC. All I knew was we had the Bristol Museum available for 2 hours and we needed a couple of wow shots for an event campaign. I suggested a few models and together with designer Molly Mishy May, we worked out the plan. Vicki was to do Victoria’s hair at my studio ahead of the shoot to save time on set and while I rigged lights she was to work with Donatella. It was a great plan and it worked perfectly. You have to start with the end in mind. As soon as I was on set with my clients I established the fact they wanted one shot with portrait orientation for a poster and leaflet campaign with space at the top and on the left for text and one landscape orientated shot for body copy. Both shots needed to show the museum as a classic building suitable to hold functions. The models were to be in dramatic poses as if playing roles in a performance rather than just looking pretty……….

Fuji X-T1

Do you love my work and want to support me? If you’re planning on buying camera gear, you can check out above-noted links. Prices remain the same for you, but a small percentage of your purchase value is valued back to me. Thank you!

07

Touring Cambodia at the start of the rainy season was definitely the right thing to do. There are far less tourists to the point that just off the tourist trail there were none at all. Tours were often led by official guides following arrows that took in the main parts of the temples but from one side only. I chose to ignore the arrows and found myself in an identical symmetrical half of the temple but without any tourists. Perfect ……

05

Nowhere has quite touched my soul like Cambodia. Four weeks of travels in ‘The Kingdom of Wonder’(The Cambodian tourist board slogan) has left me wanting more. The friends I made, the sheer fun of the place and the opportunities for photography yet fulfilled will ensure I return. Here is part one of a photographic diary of my adventure captured on the Fuji X-T1 and X-Pro1 cameras. Camera kit: Fuji X-T1 with 10-24 and 55-200mm zooms plus 14mm, 23mm, 35mm, 56mm and 60mm primes. I used the primes for my portraits (mainly featured in the next blog posts) and the zooms for landscapes……..

17

Jake and Jolie are engaged to be married next year and agreed to model for my 1:2 training session with some clients from Scotland. We shot on the streets and in the bars of Bristol. I showed my clients how to find dry shooting locations if it’s raining and how to find amazing light no matter what the weather is doing. The day started with flat overcast light and ended with afternoon sunlight. These pictures were all taken using the available light and hand held. I know this new lens and camera from Fuji is hot property right now so I thought I’d show what it can do and how the pictures look when shooting portraits wide open or nearly wide open. To save you wading through lots of images here I’ve exported a web gallery from Lightroom. Just click on the graphic and you will be transported to the gallery. Some Lightroom templates don’t display correctly on Google Chrome browser but Safari, IE and Firefox seem fine. Click on the thumbnails to see the Exif data. I’ve included it so you can see the aperture set etc. I shot every frame on the Fujifilm X-T1 in manual exposure mode. I used the screen on the back or the big, bright viewfinder to set the framing and exposure of each shot before I pressed the button. This live preview is so much faster than the faff with an SLR of taking a shot, looking at it, adjusting settings etc and taking another one. I end up shooting far less pictures and get many more ‘hits’ in my output. It’s refreshing to have no ‘test’ shots that are under or over exposed etc…..

Fujifilm Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2

Do you love my work and want to support me? If you’re planning on buying camera gear, you can check out above-noted links. Prices remain the same for you, but a small percentage of your purchase value is valued back to me. Thank you!

13

Here are 80 of my pictures shot using the Fuji X-T1 in jpeg mode. I shot RAWs too but don’t have a means of processing them yet. I switched the camera to monochrome and did any final tweaks in Lightroom. Jpegs have very little latitude for adjustment so I’ve pretty much left them as shot. Enjoy!

03

I have just been trialling the new grip, base plate and L bracket for the Fuji X-E2 supplied in the UK by Photo Madd. The grip is a great improvement on the X-E1 model widely available on Ebay. Here are my findings. Some X-E1 users took a file to their X-E1 plate when they upgraded to the X-E2. It only needs the removal of a small piece of aluminium to avoid the X-E1 base plate from pinching the LCD screen on the X-E2. A permanent marker soon covers glaring silver aluminium revealed. However I found the original E-X1 design with multiple finger notches in the grip rather uncomfortable to use. This upgraded design utilising the single fore finger notch is so much better. The RRS grip on my X-Pro1 is a single notch design and it works just fine……..

13

Hi I’m Damien Lovegrove, a portrait photographer, writer and trainer based at a converted barn and farmhouse in Somerset UK. I have a passion for beautiful photography and I will go to great lengths to create wonderful light. I don’t leave things to chance in my work and I love directing the moment. I suppose I’m the antithesis of a documentary or reportage photographer. I like to take control. I started making pictures professionally when I joined the BBC as a cameraman in 1984 at the age of 19. I’ve had many careers since then, all of them photography related.

What’s your rig?
I have owned all kinds of camera and spent more years of my life shooting on film than digital. I went digital in 2001 and In recent years I’ve had a Hasselblad H2 and a Phase One P25+ back with five prime lenses among countless DSLR kits. Now I’m in love with the Fujifilm X-Pro 1. It doesn’t get between me and my subject in quite the same way as an SLR does and this helps me capture the connection that I want in my work. The lenses are first class too……..

Fuji X-Pro Curation

Aspects of Digital Photography focusing on the Fuji X-Pro1/X-Pro2, X-T1, X-E1/E2 and X100S/T - photographer, reviews, samples and more. The most comprehensive Collection on Fuji X-Pro1 articles, reviews and news on the Web! View also a collective of photographers from around the world shooting almost exclusively with the Fujifilm X-Pro1, X-T1, X-E1/E2 and the X100S/T.